Donkees
Donkees's Journal
Video: The New Chairman of the Senate Budget Committee
Jan 17, 2021
For too long our country has prioritized corporate profits, tax cuts for the rich and military spending over investing in the American people.
That is what I will fight to change as Senate Budget Committee Chairman.
The American Abyss
The American Abyss
A historian of fascism and political atrocity on Trump, the mob and what comes next.
By Timothy Snyder
Jan. 9, 2021
Excerpts:
Post-truth is pre-fascism, and Trump has been our post-truth president. When we give up on truth, we concede power to those with the wealth and charisma to create spectacle in its place. Without agreement about some basic facts, citizens cannot form the civil society that would allow them to defend themselves. If we lose the institutions that produce facts that are pertinent to us, then we tend to wallow in attractive abstractions and fictions. Truth defends itself particularly poorly when there is not very much of it around, and the era of Trump — like the era of Vladimir Putin in Russia — is one of the decline of local news. Social media is no substitute: It supercharges the mental habits by which we seek emotional stimulation and comfort, which means losing the distinction between what feels true and what actually is true.
In November 2020, reaching millions of lonely minds through social media, Trump told a lie that was dangerously ambitious: that he had won an election that in fact he had lost. This lie was big in every pertinent respect: not as big as “Jews run the world,” but big enough. The significance of the matter at hand was great: the right to rule the most powerful country in the world and the efficacy and trustworthiness of its succession procedures. The level of mendacity was profound. The claim was not only wrong, but it was also made in bad faith, amid unreliable sources. It challenged not just evidence but logic: Just how could (and why would) an election have been rigged against a Republican president but not against Republican senators and representatives? Trump had to speak, absurdly, of a “Rigged (for President) Election.”
The force of a big lie resides in its demand that many other things must be believed or disbelieved. To make sense of a world in which the 2020 presidential election was stolen requires distrust not only of reporters and of experts but also of local, state and federal government institutions, from poll workers to elected officials, Homeland Security and all the way to the Supreme Court. It brings with it, of necessity, a conspiracy theory: Imagine all the people who must have been in on such a plot and all the people who would have had to work on the cover-up.
Politicians who want Trumpism to end have a simple way forward: Tell the truth about the election.
America will not survive the big lie just because a liar is separated from power. It will need a thoughtful repluralization of media and a commitment to facts as a public good. The racism structured into every aspect of the coup attempt is a call to heed our own history. Serious attention to the past helps us to see risks but also suggests future possibility. We cannot be a democratic republic if we tell lies about race, big or small. Democracy is not about minimizing the vote nor ignoring it, neither a matter of gaming nor of breaking a system, but of accepting the equality of others, heeding their voices and counting their votes.
A rioter during the mayhem at the Capitol. He punched the door after being pepper-sprayed and forced out of the building, 3:45 p.m.Credit...Ashley Gilbertson/VII, for The New York Times
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/09/magazine/trump-coup.html
''The president's speech was a masterclass in demagoguery.''
When the whole speech is deliberately based on lies, the word ''peacefully'' becomes a lie.
"If Mike Pence does the right thing, we win the election ... He has the absolute right to do it," Trump said, repeating the false assertion that the vice president can singlehandedly overturn the result of the presidential race.
Trump referred to the counting of ballots in the 2020 election as "explosions of bullshit," prompting laughter and cheers from the crowd.
"We will never give up, we will never concede. You don't concede when there's theft involved," Trump said, though there's no evidence to substantiate his allegations. Trump at another point also falsely suggested that Biden will be an "illegitimate" president.
https://www.businessinsider.com/trump-peppered-supporters-with-lies-in-speech-on-overturning-election-2021-1
Biden says he gave "serious consideration" to nominating Bernie Sanders for labor secretary...
Biden says he gave "serious consideration" to nominating Bernie Sanders for labor secretary, but they both decided against it to avoid vacating seat and risking Democrats' Senate control
He and Sanders will still "work closely on our shared agenda of increasing worker power"
https://twitter.com/CBSNews/status/1347625948989054977
Sanders: It must be made clear that no president, now or in the future, can lead an insurrection
Some people ask: Why would you impeach and convict a president who has only a few days left in office? The answer: Precedent. It must be made clear that no president, now or in the future, can lead an insurrection against the U.S. government.
https://twitter.com/BernieSanders/status/1347625769242140675
Sanders: We must keep faith with the working families of this country ...
https://twitter.com/BernieSanders/status/1346855823998414856
Sanders: Senate Republican Leadership Turned Their Backs on Working Families Today
https://twitter.com/SenSanders/status/1345094383104884739
LIVE - Working Families Need Help NOW
Sen. Sanders: I am on the Senate floor with a compromise: Let us vote on both $2,000 survival checks and McConnell's alternative, and see where the chips fall.
Working families need help NOW. Let us not go home until the American people see their Senators vote!
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